The Globe and Mail - June 29, 1996

"Atlantic Festival shows polish, but lacks vision"
Kate Taylor

This production of an 18th-century comedy about town and country manners is energetic and professional, but needs to be made more meaningful for contemporary audiences.

THE Atlantic Theatre Festival is only in its second season and its hometown, Wolfville, already appears to have invested heavily in the idea that the theatre will draw tourists. The theatre is housed in a brand new auditorium which was built inside an old arena; it is sponsored by major corporations in Nova Scotia; and it is prominently promoted in Wolfville's gourmet restaurants, as well as being cited in a new tourist guide as one of the town's top attractions.

But if there is a reason other than tourism to launch a festival devoted to the classics, it was not in evidence at a recent performance of She Stoops to Conquer, the first offering in a four-show season that started last week. To judge from this production, the festival's artistic director Michael Bawtree doesn't have a compelling artistic vision: He seems to believe that one produces the classics because one produces the classics. His version of Oliver Goldsmith's 18th-century comedy about town and country manners is polished and energetic, but he can't find a way to bring the play's themes alive for a contemporary audience.

Goldsmith created She Stoops in 1773 as a reaction against the moralizing sentimental comedies of the day, which in their turn had rejected the amoral universe of Restoration comedy. Thus its playful plot, in which the young Londoner Marlow is duped into believing that a country gentleman's house is an inn and his daughter a barmaid, is more than a comedy of errors.

Marlow is painfully shy in the company of ladies, but boisterous amongst bawds, so to win him, the spirited Kate Hardcastle pretends she is less than a lady. (Hence the title of the play.) The Hardcastle home is used to such disguises: Kate dresses like a fashion plate by day but puts on simple country clothes at night to please her old-fashioned father. Meanwhile, his pretentious wife Mrs. Hardcastle is trying to marry off her rambunctious son Tony to her niece Constance, but this lady prefers Hastings, the sauve London man who is Marlow's travelling companion. So, She Stoops is also a satire of social hypocrisy and a lighthearted advocate of rural plain speaking over urban airs and graces.

Bawtree's actors make much of the comedy, but don't build a lot of detail into their performances, leaving the social tensions of the play largely untouched. Bill Carr does a funny routine as Tony, creating the traditional dumb squire fond of hock and hounds. As Hardcastle and daughter Kate, Leon Pownall and Megan Follows are a hugely energetic pairing, him neatly suggesting the offended dignity but charitable manners of the gentleman mistaken for an innkeeper; she delightedly donning the guise of barmaid.

But these are the most sympathetic characters in the piece. When it comes to Mrs. Hardcastle, Nicola Lipman enthusiastically delivers the obvious humour in the role, but never examines the cupidity of this woman, whose scheme to marry Tony to Constance is effectively an attempt to steal the girl's fortune in jewels. Similarly, Paul Hopkins does not pry too closely into Marlow's heart, simply moving with little explanation from bashfulness to playfulness. At worst, Marlow is an outrageous hypocrite, with one face for society and another for the lower orders; at best he is, like many wooers, at his ease only when there's nothing at stake. The point of the play is to show him the benefits of simple manners, but Hopkins makes little of these social distinctions so his transformance is undramatic.

The fault is not simply his, but also Bawtree's who has not illuminated Goldsmith's themes for cast or audience. In Act III, as Kate stoops beneath her social station, Follows adopts a Maritime acccent. That's the only hint in this production that Bawtree is thinking about how this play will sound to modern ears in Atlantic Canada.

If a contemporary She Stoops in which Toronto businessmen are duped by lively Maritimers might seem forced, there's no doubt that a probing look at the play's social universe could make it more meaningful. Take as a model the work Douglas Campbell did on a direct forebearer of She Stoops at the Stratford Festival last year. His period-costume production of William Wycherley's Country Wife, a nasty sexual comedy from the late 17th century, bristled with tension so clear were the parallels with contemporary mores.

It is not fair, of course, to ask the fledgling Atlantic Festival to match what the mature Stratford Festival can produce when it is in full artistic flight. But if the example of Stratford springs quickly to mind here, it is because it has so clearly inspired Bawtree, who worked there in the early days. In Wolfville, he returns to a play he directed there -- She Stoops to Conquer was part of the 1972 season -- and has built a thrust stage for the new festival, a Shakespearean design that Stratford was the first theatre to revive in modern times.

There's no shame in using theatre as a tourist draw. The Stratford Festival was specifically started as an economic development project for the Ontario town, but it is worth noting it started in a tent and grew slowly in what were more expansionist times. In a tougher climate, Wolfville has built infrastructure and devoted enough resources to this production to give it a fine professional polish that elevates it well above much summer theatre. What the Atlantic Festival needs now is an artistic vision.

Source: The Globe and Mail